Original message ——–
From: Stuart Gannes
Subject: Important update from Make Greetings

Robot Hackers,

By now we hope all of you received your Robot Hack packages and we’re eager to learn what you are doing, or even planning to do with them. Based on your responses we plan to feature your projects on our Nov 20 finale. You will have a chance to join the Hangouts on Air and show the Community what you are working on. (We also plan to ask a few of our Master Makers to respond to your projects.)

Let us know the evolution of your idea, its current status, what’s next. Let us know if you were inspired by any of the Master Makers we have been featuring on our live sessions. A paragraph or a couple of sentences is all we need.Please respond by email before the weekend.If you haven’t yet posted on our G+ Community Page please do so. It’s filled with updates and interesting videos. And it’s growing like crazy!

And watch for an update about the Nov. 20 show. We will post that on Monday

Go Teams!

Stuart Gannes
Producer
————–

From: Rick
Subject: Re: Important update from Make Greetings

Stuart,

Thanks goes to you, Sherry H., Mike S., and all the others who’ve made this Robot Hacks event fun and informative. Our project is a set of dancing mannequins on a tabletop art piece and is on schedule to be completed early next week.

Today, we’re installing the servos and tomorrow installing the sensors, all of which were programmed in prototype stage during the first two weeks.  We’ll debug during the weekend.  The artist on the team will decorate the final piece after the weekend.

Our primary inspiration from a Master Maker is Erin Kennedy, a/k/a Robotgrrl.

We look forward to seeing how others have been inspired!

Regards,
Team Tree Trunk

Sent via the Samsung Galaxy S™III, an AT&T 4G LTE smartphone

——–
From: Stuart Gannes
Subject: important update from MAKE

Thanks for the update Rick!

Stay tuned.
Stuart

——–
From: Stuart Gannes
Subject: Talk about your journey

Starting to see what’s brewing in your teams. Please let us know what you are doing. Don’t be shy. There are many newbies among us. For inspiration, check out this comment from one of the team leaders:

I also want to take this opportunity to thank you (MAKE and GE especially) for giving me an opportunity to dive in and really learn about Arduino and get some great hands-on experience with building robots. I’m a current AmeriCorps VISTA Leader serving with FIRST Robotics and I do work in my community with engaging kids and adults with robotics and STEM. However, I have never really had the resources or opportunity to learn so much about electronics and robotics, and my VISTA living allowance makes it difficult to afford the necessary equipment. Due to the generosity of GE and you guys over at MAKE, I can finally get my hands dirty! After watching kids experience the wonder of building a robot, I get to do it myself and share this project with my community. 

Can’t wait to learn about your journeys

Stuart

——–
From: Stuart Gannes
Subject: Every step matters

Greetings,

And thanks! to the dozens of you who already responded. Your stories are great and we are thrilled with your participation.

We’re still looking forward to hearing  – and learning – how things went for the rest of you. At the very least this will help us with our next Master Makers/Kit productions.

What inspired you to sign up? What do you like about the kits? What are you doing or think you might be doing? Send a note today if possible.

Every step matters!

Stuart

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From: Rick
Subject: Re: Every step matters

Inspiration for signing up was the challenge to a small group of friends to put our ideas into action, especially our recent discussion of an interactive yard art sculpture, using the Robot Hacks event for a chance to build a desktop prototype model.

The kit was a great brain teaser, giving us a set of building blocks along with a cookbook and the MAKE magazines to show how makers use available material to turn their dreams into reality.  The engineering notebooks brought back memories, good and bad, of our college engineering classes and our current jobs — excellent way, though, to remind participants to document both what you plan and what you do.

So far, this event has [re]opened our eyes to microcontroller programming; prototyping; test fixtures; use cases; the many uses of sensors such as PIR, LDR, and ultrasonic to control servos; the physics of pulleys, soldering, metalworking, gluing, wooden puzzle making; design preparation/presentation; marketing to the Maker community; realistic scheduling for a volunteer project and the esprit de corps of the Maker community in general as showcased in the panels/online hangouts.

We plan to continue working with the MAKE ultimate Arduino kit after this event, figuring out how to use the shields with Arduino in order to control more servos, motors and other gears for a much larger art project.

That said, the recent natural disaster in the Philippines has challenged us to rethink the direction of our next project — should our efforts be more effective if we turned our attention to a more humanitarian effort than abstract art?

Again, we thank you for encouraging us to add experience to knowledge and make something no matter how [im]practical.

We look forward to your synopsis of the types of projects that the dozens of Robot Hacks teams wrote you about.

Regards,
Team Tree Trunk
Sent from my iPad